The Third Reich’s navy committed atrocities - Lemmy

(This takes seven minutes to read.) The ‘clean Kriegsmarine’ myth remains one of the most successful lies about the Axis powers. Hardly anybody ever discusses the Kriegsmarine’s war crimes, and even institutions like the USHMM have almost [https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn516732] nothing at all to say about them. This silence is not entirely unreasonable given that the Axis committed the bulk of its atrocities on land, but discussing the Kriegsmarine’s malconduct would demonstrate to people just how saturated the Third Reich’s armed forces were with White supremacy. Quoting Wojciech Wichert’s ‘Nazi Indoctrination of the Kriegsmarine and its Relations with the NSDAP in the Years 1935–1945 – Outline of Subject Matter [https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/30146197.pdf]’: >Kriegsmarine Commander Siegfried Sorge […] argued that a navy officer should be taught not only about the soldierly duties but also about German history to fully comprehend the elements of the [Fascist] worldview. Moreover, as important teaching material he recommended that the officers read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and his speeches published by Franz Eher Verlag. > >It is evident that Sorge planted the Kriegsmarine in the [Fascist] camp as a totally obedient instrument of the [Third Rreich]. It is, of course, impossible to determine precisely how much influence Sorge’s work exerted upon the Kriegsmarine officers. Nevertheless, the book was a crucial counsellor for young officers of the navy for leadership that became very popular not only among them (in 1943 the fifth edition was published). > >[…] > >Beside the “cultural care” (kulturelle Betreuung) the navy also took over the antisemitic indoctrination that was practiced in the NSDAP within the framework of the so–called training (Schulung).⁴⁶ An explanatory leaflet (Wehrbetreuungsmerkblatt) from 1 April 1941 obliged the unit commanders and their propaganda officers (Wehrbetreuungsoffiziere) to teach the sailors about the “Jewish question.”⁴⁷ Soldiers were to be informed that for a thousand years Jews had succeeded in penetrating “the healthy host nations” (gesunde Wirtsvölker) and harming them. > >As essential reading were such books as Alfred Rosenberg’s “Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten”, Walther Brewitz’s “Von Abraham bis Rathenau Viertausend Jahre jüdischer Geschichte” and Hans F.K. Günther’s “Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes.” The racial and antisemitic literature of the Nazi party was included, henceforth, also in the reading canon in the navy.⁴⁸ The Axis’s capture of the Latvian port city of Liepāja on June 29, 1941 offers valuable examples of the Kriegsmarine putting its White supremacy into practice [https://www.liepajajews.org/LGhetto.pdf]: >Liepāja had an ice-free port and a large naval base, and so it was the German Navy that took charge of the city. Several successive Navy commandants also had a major rôle in the atrocities [https://muse.jhu.edu/document/2891] of the first few months. On July 2, Korvettenkapitän Dr. Walter Stein warned the population that ten hostages would be killed for every act of sabotage, looting, or attack. He was succeeded by Fregattenkapitän Dr. Hans Kawelmacher, whose aide, Korvettenkapitän Fritz Brückner, amended this decree on July 8 by threatening to kill 100 hostages for every injured German soldier. > >On July 5, Brückner issued a set of draconian rules for Jews [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nazi_orders_against_Jews_Liepaja_1941_01.jpg], including the requirement to wear yellow patches on their chest and backs. Thus marked, Jewish men became easy prey for daily manhunts by the Navy, SD, and Latvian police, and in the next two weeks, more than 300 Jews were shot. Many victims were conveniently seized on the Firehouse Square, where Jewish men between 16 and 60 had to report for work every morning. > >Believing their own propaganda that Jews were the main pillars of the Soviet state, the Red Army, and the partisans, the [Axis invaders] ruthlessly killed Jewish men. They even killed them as “hostages” to retaliate for sniper attacks by manifestly non-Jewish partisans, failing to realize that this would hardly deter the latter, as solidarity between Jews and non-Jews was tenuous. > >The almost daily executions by SS or Navy firing squads with Latvian helpers were performed within the city limits, near the lighthouse and the beach. Often they were watched by hundreds of [Axis] soldiers and their sweethearts. > >The pace of shootings was not fast enough for commandant Kawelmacher (a.k.a. Gontard). On July 22 he telexed the commanding admiral of the Baltic fleet in Kiel, requesting 100 SS- and 50 Schutzpolizei troops “for rapid execution [of the] Jewish problem. With present SS-personnel, this would take one year, which is untenable for [the] pacification of Liepāja.” His request was promptly granted; the notorious Latvian SD Commando under Viktors Arājs arrived from Riga, shot about 1,100 Jewish men on July 24 and 25, and left. > >Meanwhile the 2nd Company of Police Battalion 13 under SS-Hauptsturmführer Georg Rosenstock had arrived, primarily for patrol duty and to a lesser extent for executions. From then on, the Navy played a less active rôle, leaving the persecution of Jews in the hands of Kügler and his superior, SS-und Polizeistandortführer Dr. Fritz Dietrich, who arrived in mid-September. > >[…] > >The Stutthof prisoners were put on barges on April 25, 1945 and towed westward for a week without food. After the tugs abandoned the barges, Norwegian prisoners managed to navigate them to a beach at Neustadt i.H., where those Jews who had not perished during the voyage staggered ashore. > >They were greeted by Navy men who shot or drowned more than 50 of the Jews, including 8 from Liepāja—as it turned out, only a few hours before liberation by British troops.¹⁸ By this cruel quirk of fate, Navy sailors had once again become the nemesis of Liepāja Jews, nearly finishing the job their Navy comrades had begun in 1941. As well, this comes from Lawrence Paterson’s Hitler’s Forgotten Flotillas: Kriegsmarine Security Forces, chapter 7 [https://books.google.com/books?id=2BZhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT224]: >FK Birnbaum […] was tasked with clearing a route along the Crimean coast from Eupatoria to Feodosiya with branches into active habours. He had been named Räumchef Krim (Barrage Commander, Crimea) and co-ordinated the activities of the ‘Naval Special Duties Detachment’. He planned and executed a landing of ‘agents, prisoners of war and shock troops’ between Cape Fiolyent and Khersones, south-west of Sevastopol, on 13 July using R-boats and MFPs to land troops. > >Mopping up lingering pockets of resistance, ‘111 prisoners, among them a Commissar, Staff Officers and women’ were brought in while twenty-nine ‘Russians who resisted’ were shot. This operation was probably not connected to the orgy of violence unleashed against Sevastopol’s captured Soviet Jews who were shot on the outskirts of the city, but there can be little doubt as to the fate of the Commissar who was subject to [Berlin’s] Kommissarbefehl that called for their summary execution as purveyors of ‘Judeo-Bolshevik ideology’. The Kriegsmarine also committed several atrocities as it was at sea. For brevity’s sake, I shall limit myself to three examples. (The Kriegsmarine’s sinking of SS City of Benares seems to have resulted from misidentification.) Quoting Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare: Norms and Practices during the World Wars, pages 184 [https://books.google.com/books?id=AapQAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA184]–185 [https://books.google.com/books?id=AapQAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA185]: >#### The U-37–Severn Leigh Incident >One malicious case in World War II involved the sinking of the Kelston Steamship Company’s 5,242-ton Severn Leigh. In August of 1940, the Severn Leigh was sailing from England to Canada, supposedly with a convoy. The ship had a crew of 43. > >On the night between August 23rd and 24th, U-37,⁹³ commanded by Kapitänleutnant Viktor Oehrn, targeted the Severn Leigh with one of its torpedoes. The torpedo hit the ship and killed eight crew members. As the crew and gunner were in the process of abandoning the ship and trying to board the lifeboats, the surfaced U-37 approached and opened fire. This attack took the life of another 18 seamen. > >On September 5, 10 survivors, in bad shape, arrived in a lifeboat at Leverburgh, Isle of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides. These were the only survivors from the Severn Leigh. Oehrns later explanation of why he committed this atrocity was that his Kriegsmarine thought that the survivors were going for their deck gun. Although Oehrn contemplated using the submarine guns to kill the survivors in the lifeboats and had his gun and man ready for it, he decided against doing it.⁹⁴ > >[…] > >#### The U-156–Oregon Incident >The [Allied] tanker Oregon was sailing from Aruba to New York on February 28, 1942, when U-156, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Werner Hartenstein, intercepted it. Since the submarine had no torpedoes left, it surfaced and used its deck gun to attack. U-156 sailed around the Oregon for about 90 minutes, firing shell after shell into the crippled ship. > >After about four hours, the Oregon sank. Six crew members died in the initial attack; the remaining 30 crew members escaped onto a lifeboat and a raft. The lifeboat landed in the Dominican Republic on March 4, and the Gulfpenn picked up those on the raft. Some of the survivors reported that the submarine had used its machine guns to shoot at surviving crew members when they tried to lower the lifeboats.⁹⁸ Page 188 [https://books.google.com/books?id=AapQAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA188]: >#### The U-852–Peleus Incident >The Greek Peleus, with a crew of 35, was steaming from Freetown, South Africa, to Buenos Aires when U-852, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, intercepted it in the mid-Atlantic, on March 13, 1944. While U-852 was surfaced, Eck fired two torpedoes at the Peleus. Within three minutes or so, the ship disintegrated and vanished. It is difficult to know how many of the Peleus crew survived the blast, but Blair estimates that maybe half did.¹⁰⁸ > >Eck took on board two survivors, to extract information about the identity of his victims, and then returned them to a raft. Later, Eck “ordered that machine guns, machine pistols, and hand grenades be brought to the bridge and that the twin 20mm and the 37mm flak guns be manned,” and “for about the next five hours […] Eck maneuvered U-852 through the wreckage and lifeboats, firing away.”¹⁰⁹ (Emphasis added in all cases.) With the number of Jews at sea as both civilians and Allied personnel, it is surprising that we do not have more examples of the Kriegsmarine committing antisemitic atrocities. In fact, not only did Karl Dönitz turn down Admiral Kurt Fricke’s suggestion in 1944 that they destroy Jewish refugee transports departing from the Kingdom of Romania to Palestine, Dönitz actually provided naval escorts to said transports for the outbound part of their journey. [https://books.google.com/books?id=hXw7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA229] In other words, the Kriegsmarine could have committed more antisemitic atrocities if it wanted to do so, but Karl Dönitz’s sympathies for Herzlianism complicated this. Further reading: Waves of Hate: Naval Atrocities of the Second World War [https://annas-archive.li/md5/1d095a6ea7982e4c973c8d0fd496ef5c]